Camping near Wierzbiny, 17-07-2001. A bit like the tough is getting into overgear today with the temperature well into the thirties centigrade and the hilly country side offering me some steep badly mantained roads winding uphill and down again - after all...all that goes up has got to eventually go down again. Roads lined by ancient oaks that seem to groan in extasy while I cycle underrneath them, the sounds of wind blowing through huge tree crowns responsible for the eerie sounds that bring me back in the here and now...back from far-away travels inside my own Dutch mind, wandering off [View Full Entry]

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Camping at Lake Goldab, 15-07-2001. Die Wolfsschanze as the Germans called The Wolf's Lair in their harsh language, the place were Mister Hitler The Big Jew Hater was holed up most of the war orquestrating the horrors befalling his own precious Das Deutsche Volk as well as the rest of Europe - Wasn't that little sh*t Austrian himself...makes you wonder what his fasciantion with the Germans was. Maybe he felt born in the wrong body...a bit like a Kathoey in Thailand but then more on the nationality side I guess.... Dozens of bunkers and assorted structures set deep in dark an [View Full Entry]

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Private camping near the Wolf's Lair, 14-07-2001. I'm not much in the way of a strong believer in the power of a higher entity like a God or similar power well beyond the here and now. However, spending most of my days cycling through deep green, pine smelling forests, camping every night at lakes'sides - often sleeping under the stars unless the mozzie clans force me to take shelter inside my linen portable shack - one can't but wonder where and how, the enormity of Creation, or maybe just a dream within a dream... Plenty of time too to think about [View Full Entry]

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Near Ketrzen on some illegal camp ground,13-07-2001. A strong wind is coming in from the Baltic Sea while I wait for the ferry across the Vistula Lagoon. Local young kids in woolen pants of indefinite color practice their English and German on me, curiosity having the better of them, no big surprise considering my old rusty iron lady burdened under 35 kilo of survival gear, my dufty old tent and mouldy sleeping bag, my ragged old clothes my eight days old beard and general rugged appearance will probably give them enough blablabla material for days to come...get their friends back in [View Full Entry]

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Close to Krynica Morska, 12-07-2001. I cycle through flat and open land leaving the hustle and bustle of big-time Gdansk behind me, natural tranquility around me while I do my daily work-out on my rusty old lady who though producing creaking sounds every so often seems to be doing just fine otherwise. I have my lunch with a bunch of local day workers having a quick smoke and coffee break from loading huge bales of gold colored hay on and endless row of cranky trucks. Inky black coffee with the taste of residue floating on a badly polluted Thrid World river. [View Full Entry]

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Gdansk, 11-07-2001. Getting in and out of big cities on a bicycle always is a major hassle, not to speak of the effect the hectic admosphere of big cities has on my poor brain after seven days of natural tranquility. Hoping to protect my alraedy hopelessly chaotic and traumatised Dutch raised brain from further damage I take a small cabin on a camp ground just outside town. My cabin is even furnished with what looks like an antiquated mini refridgerator - the lettering on the side telling me it is Russian manufracture. Whatever, I can drink ice-cold beer again during the [View Full Entry]

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At the camping at Brzezno, 10-07-2001. Hel couldn't be called Hel unless it had some pretty nasty sh*t to throw at me, rain.. any long distance cyclist's nightmare... apart maybe from the polish lagerlouds at the nearby camping last night with loud argueing, drunk screaming and rowdy movements of staggering male intoxicated bodies perpiring like pigs, moving through the forest on a mad quest for a comfortable pissing spot, untill well after 05.00 o'clock in the morning. As the say in my native Dutch "an accident never comes alone" so I wasn't all that surprised to se [View Full Entry]

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Hel Peninsula, 09-07-2001. Hel Peninsula, what a fitting name consider that over 80.000 German troops were trapped here on this 34 km. long and at its most 2 km. broad peninsula covered in dense pine forest, for months in the cold of the Polish winter at the end of the Second World War, being pounded into the sand dunes by Russian atillary, young German soldiers traumatised by long gruelling years of bloody war against a ruthless adversary. Fighting and dying in the name of a Führer who was becoming more irrational by the day....yeah, I am pretty sure for these poor [View Full Entry]

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Stowinski National Park, at Lake Dolgie, 08-07-2001. I'm cycling through essentially rural land, sparsely polpulated with tiny hamlets that have a centuries old feel to it where small eateries were filled with hard bare breaking working class farmers quickly finish off tasteless looking food and whose hapless and crude clothes and often dull look in sometimes young but already wrinkled faces due to much time outside on the land, tells me all there's to know about their harsh excistence, about their meagre incomes. I now cycled along the Baltic coast, through a lake area set in [View Full Entry]

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Near Lazy, 07-07-2001. It is still dark when the call of Mother Nature wakes me up explaining to me in her benign way I have to get up to give some spare time to my full bladder. An opaque moon and the last vestiges of alien kingdoms on far away stars pay me tribute while I let my flow go.... Tjee, where do all these weird thoughts come from being alone out here early morning in a dense Polish forest near the Baltic Sea. Might as well try to rekindle my campfire and boil some coffee. After nearly a week of [View Full Entry]

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